The Church is one and unique
According to the common position of the Fathers and the Holy Councils, the Church is unique because Christ, its Head, cannot have more bodies. The Church is one and is unique, because it is the body of the One and unique Christ. The division of the Church is ontologically impossible that is why there have never been any division of the Church only separation of the Church. According to the word of the Lord, the vineyard is not divided, only the unfruitful branches are withered (paraphrase after John 15, 1-6)
The heretics and schismatics separated themselves of the indivisible Church of Christ in different ages and as a result of that they ceased to be members of the Church and of its body. They were first the Gnostics, then the Arians and the fighters against the Holy Spirit then the monophysites and the iconoclasts afterwards the Catholics, the Protestants, the Unitarians and all the other legions of heretics and schismatics.
The dogma about the infallibility of the pope is more than an heresy. It is the greatest heresy of all, an opposition without equal against Christ the Theanthropos. It is a new betrayal of Christ, a new crucifixion of Christ on the cross of the papal humanism.
The unification of the Churches cannot be realized if the Catholic and the Protestant Churches will not come back completely to the Orthodox position from the beginning from which they deviated completely.
The 20th century will not remain in the history of the church as the age of the Church as it is already defined since the churches of the West don’t correct their deviations which affect the essence and the meaning of the Church. The ecclesiastic deviations of the West as we know have acted for ages for the change of the ecclesiastic matters and they urged for a dogmatic freedom of Vatican and of Protestantism which lead to the Western innovations about faith and cult which is against the Holy Scripture and the Holy Traditions.
Ecumenism, the greatest heresy of the 20th century preaching the dogmatic and religious union and tending to found a sort of pan religion by the unification of all Christian faiths and religions represents a mortal danger for Orthodoxy.
The Orthodox Church is not one among the other numerous Churches. It is the unique Church of Christ, the one which holds, teaches and treasures unchanged the faith of the Apostles, of the Holy Fathers, of the Orthodox believers, the only one capable to support the troubled people of today.
Archimandrite Spiridon Bilalis
